(Sura 12: verse 36 - 37) - Dreams in Sura Yusuf

Added December 28, 2008(modified from a Feb 2008 article)

"And two youths entered the prison
with him. One of them said: I saw myself pressing wine. And the other
said: I saw myself carrying bread on my head, of which birds ate.
Inform us of its interpretation (tawil); surely we see you to be of the
doers
of good (muhsineen).

He said: There shall not come to
you the food with which you are fed,
but I will inform you both of its (the dreams) interpretation (tawil)
before it
(the food) comes to
you; this is of what my Lord has taught me; surely I have forsaken the
religion of a people who do not believe in God, and they are deniers
of the hereafter...." (Qur'an 12:36-37)

Joseph (Yusuf) is seen as one of the muhsineen, one of those whose
actions exhibit the quality of ihsan, of beauty and goodness - one
whose actions are beautiful. This is a kind of spiritual beauty that
arises through an elevated inner state, and is reflective of a
personality whose architecture derives its qualities from a higher
reality. So
Joseph's companions in the prison turn to him and say, concerning their
dreams: "Tell us of the
tawil (the hermeneutical interpretation) for we see you as one of the
muhsineen." (Qur'an 12:36) They see him, through the spiritual
beauty of his conduct
and manner of expression, as one who has a knowledge beyond ordinary
knowledge. And Joseph himself indicates that he knows the tawil through
what God has taught him ("...this is
of what my Lord has taught me; surely I have forsaken the way of a
people who do not believe in God...." (Qur'an 12:37)), and this
is an indication of his status as a messenger.

The prisoners ask for an explanation of their dreams since, although
they were powerfully affected by them, they cannot comprehend them.
Dreams embody what is not physical - they take fears, feelings,
anxieties, thoughts, ideas, and concepts and display them in the garb
of symbolic forms and events - they give a body, a form to the contents
of our mind. So what is seen in a dream is not meant to be taken
literally. In fact, it cannot be understood in a literal manner without
seeming absurd or confused. Because of the symbolic nature of dreams,
they require interpretation to be understood. Without interpretation
they only confuse us.

Dreams can be a psychic play whose characters and plot are based upon
the inner movements of our mental world and as such they can display
the state of our souls (our selves (nafs)) to our own selves. They can
be
a
way of processing
the meaning of events that occur in our lives and so incidents from our
lives and the perturbations and turmoil (the good and the bad) of our
inner states can manifest in symbolic form in our dreams. As well, time
and space, as they manifest in dream landscapes, become
subordinate to the symbolic content of a dream so it is possible that a
person may seem to live through long periods of time and travel vast
distances in the span of one brief dream.

Dreams can also be visionary because our nafs is hooked
into deep levels of reality and sometimes we can witness (through
symbolic forms) these deeper aspects of reality and our entanglement
with them. Such dreams are
bursting with meaning - conveying a symbolic, compressed truth that
comes to us through our subconscious but which we cannot usually grasp
while in a conscious state. The dream displays its message in a
symbolic language received without our volition like an inspiration or
message which perplexes us. With such dreams
we know we have received a message through our souls connection to
other levels but we have not the means or knowledge to interpret, to
translate these messages.

Something deep has occurred, some truth, some revelation about reality
or about our own inner state has been conveyed in the dream - our minds
have come into contact with a layer of reality which has left its
impression on our souls - but the language of the dream is a cloaked
symbolic language. So we
shake our heads and say "confused
dreams", "jumbled dreams" (Qur'an 12:44)
unless the dream is presented to someone like Joseph, who has the
ability to do tawil.

The prisoner's dreams required interpretation since the
dreams occurred when they were sleeping and so the correspondence, the
parallels, the links had to be made between what they witnessed while
asleep and what occurs in the waking world. In other words, their
vision
in sleep must be interpreted in terms of this world - in the context of
this reality - to understand what it symbolizes and what portent, if
any, it
points to in this world. The dreams of the prisoners were, perhaps,
dreams that
contained a mix of elements - they were signs of the states of their
souls but they also conveyed a hidden knowledge which their souls
acquired in the state of sleep. There are several possible aspects to
this:

One aspect is that their dreams were a means for their souls to
process their guilt or their innocence (they knew whether they were
guilty or innocent of what they were charged with) - they were
cognizant of their own guilt or innocence and this perhaps manifested
in the
nature of their dreams.

Secondly, they were granted a symbolic visionary image of the future
that awaited them. In the state of sleep their nafs were shown signs of
their future destiny. Their nafs came into contact with a deeper level
of reality, one in which time is spread out differently than it is in
this world, so they were able to gain a knowledge of how their life was
to unfold in the near future. They were able to glimpse the future that
was written for
them. They knew they had witnessed a dream of a special nature, one
imbued with power and significance, one that affected them in a deep
and forceful manner. So they felt an urgency in seeking out someone who
could interpret it for them. Likewise for the King of Egypt who
witnessed a
dream (of the seven healthy and seven lean cows), a vision that had
such an intense impact upon him that he
dismissed out of hand the opinion of his advisors that these were just
"jumbled
dreams". "And the king said: Surely
I see seven fat kine which seven lean ones devoured; and seven green ears and (seven) others dry: O
chiefs! explain to me my dream, if you can interpret the dream. They
said: Confused dreams...." (Qur'an 12:43-44) The strength of his
vision led him to determinedly seek someone who could interpret it for
him and to
persist in this seeking until he learnt of Joseph.

Note:
Interestingly, the prisoners dream only about their own fate while the
King dreams about the fate of all Egypt. The King, by virtue of being
one whose consciousness of his office and responsibilities and
obligations extends out to the boundaries of the lands he rules over,
expands the arena of his consciousness to encompass his entire kingdom.
The boundaries of his mental self are far wider than that of the
prisoners
whose boundaries are shrunken since their autonomy is limited by their
position within the kingdom and, perhaps, by their own natures.

Since the language of dreams is a cloaked, symbolic language - a
language of ideas, concepts, and truths embodied into various forms,
into
bodies and events that symbolize the true meaning - because of this it
remains opaque to most. They do not know how to interpret so they shake
their heads and say "confused
dreams" (Qur'an 12:44) as the King's courtiers did. But to one,
like Joseph,
who has
a substantial and continuous connection with deeper levels of reality,
the language is clear and evident since it is an analogue of the
symbolic language of revelation and of the higher reality from which
revelation descends and then embodies itself in various ways in our
world.

Note: "Confused dreams" is also used in the
Qur'an to describe the state of those who reject any notion of higher
realities and so claim that the verses of the Qur'an were the result of
nothing more than confused dreams. "Nay! say they: a confused medly of
dreams; nay! he has forged it; nay! he is a poet...." (Qur'an 21:5).
They are unable to recognize the symbolic language of revelation and so
to them it is like a dream which they cannot comprehend and so dismiss.
They do not realize that it is a pointer to a greater reality which
cannot be simply stuffed into the common words and phrases of this
world.

When the Prophet Muhammad woke after sleep and sat with his companions,
he would
sometimes ask them, "have any of you
had a dream/vision" and then he would
interpret it for them. He considered dreams a form of self-knowledge
and sometimes a form of minor inspiration. In the first case the dream
indicated the state of the dreamer's soul and gave clues as to what
needed correction in that person's life. In the second case the dream
was a form of useful and truthful knowledge that arrived through the
companion's dream but in a form that the dreamer did not understand.
The dreamer described the form to the Prophet and the Prophet
translated it into its meaning.

Now, just as dreams require interpretation since all that happens in a
dream
is clothed in symbolic forms, so also do events and occurrences in this
world require interpretation (in relation to deeper, more real levels
of reality). According to the Prophet "people
are
asleep, and when they die they awaken." So in this world we are
as if
asleep and dreaming a detailed, marvelous, completely engaging dream.
When we wake in the next world we will become aware that this present
life is like a dream just as in this
life when we sleep we enjoy ourselves or suffer in a dream as if it is
entirely real
until we wake and realize it was only a dream.

Since, according to the Prophet, people are asleep in this world, the
events of this life are like
dreams
and must also be interpreted (must be subject to a process of tawil) in
terms of the next world which is the
world of wakefulness in comparison to this world. As the Qur'an states:
in that domain (the hereafter) their "vision
is piercing, awake."
(Qur'an 50:22).

A small hint of this is apparent in the story of Khidr (Qur'an
18:60-82), which shows
that due to the limitations of our knowledge, we readily and zealously
misinterpret the true nature of events in this world. Khidr is a
mysterious figure who was, for a time, a teacher to Moses. He carried
out actions that, in Moses view, seemed destructive and harmful and so
Moses protested against what Khidr did. Then Khidr explained the true
nature of his actions and the benefit concealed within all that he did.
In each case, the apparent harm concealed a great benefit. All of
Khidr's actions seemed absurd and senseless until the interpretation
revealed their true nature. Khidr was
demonstrating to Moses, the limits of knowledge and the pitfalls of
limted perspectives. A step along the path of what Khidr demonstrated
is the
interpretation and meaning of the events and forms of this world as it
relates to the perspective of the next world (of higher realities).

People live their lives, and what they do and how they live are a
series of symbols, of encoded meanings which map onto higher,
truer levels of reality - the reality to which we are all eventually
(after death) fated to awaken. The prisoners and the King dreamed and
knew that their dreams mapped somehow to the waking world. Prophet
Joseph provided the explanation of this mapping for them. Our lives in
this world are like a waking dream and the Qur'an and revelation,
having
come down from a higher reality, provide a map, a decoding guide to
this higher
reality so that the signs that are continually on display on the
horizons (of this world, this life) and within our own souls may be
recognized as
wellsprings of guidance to felicity in this world and the next.

sleep until death

Since the Prophet said that
"people sleep and when they die they
awaken" this means that the waking state is like
a sleep in which people are unaware of the tremendous spiritual
understructure which undergirds this world. So when spiritual realities
are perceived in Joseph's revelatory dream, that dream is more
real than the events it foreshadows in the sense that it gives a truer
picture of the nature underlying the events
in this world.

Joseph's sleep was therefore more truthful than the events in this
world. So
when Joseph says "this is the meaning of my dream" he might have said
"this is the manifestation of the spiritual realities I beheld in my
dream." The events in this world then are treated like a dream - so
when Joseph perhaps grows anxious or frustrated or undergoes hardship,
it is like the anxiety
or frustration we may feel in a dream - we get lost in the dream and it
feels real to us - but when someone shakes us and we partially wake
enough to realize we are dreaming we are reassured and can sleep
peacefully again. When Joseph is lowered into the well by his brothers
and grows
anxious, Allah reassures him through inspiration, like someone nudging
you during a bad dream, so you realize the true state of affairs and
grow calm once again.

Over time Joseph increases in his ability to interpret the realities
behind events (as well as the true meaning of dreams) so his life
becomes anchored and calmed by spiritual realities. He is like a
dreamer who dreams while he is awake. No matter how bad the dream he
knows the deeper reality underlying the situation - he knows this takes
precedence over the shifting and fleeting realities he faces so he does
not fear or despair but undertakes the most appropriate actions in
response to each situation. Everything he does arises from a continuous
process of tawil. His dreams apprise him of the spiritual reality
underlying events in this world, and the events in this world are in
turn dream symbols in comparison to higher realities.

- Irshaad Hussain

About this article

Anyone who reads the Qur'an is likely to be struck by the unique
nature of its construction, its unusual and constantly shifting rhythms
and the sudden transmutations and displacements in its subject matter.
At first this ever changing literary terrain seems an obstacle to
understanding, but the more time one spends with this book, the more
organic, the more natural the flow of its words feel. It is almost
like flying over an ever-changing landscape - rolling valleys
punctuated by jagged rocks, forests and plains giving way to upthrust
mountains, high plateaus broken by deep lakes, deserts sprinkled
with oasis' and cleft by canyons. Despite the variety of the forms,
despite the startling contrast of adjacent features, a complex organic
beauty underlies and unites all the various elements. These "tafsirs"
emerged from numerous brief scattered notes made while reading the
qur'an (along with numerous commentaries and the works of various
scholars whose profound analyses strongly effected my views) and
reflecting on its content. As well, for a number of years
I have participated in a hallakha, a qur'anic study circle, and many of
the
tafsirs presented here were originally researched for presentation at
that forum.